Matt Fisher
Business Development Director
My role with WLS is to research, analyze and identify key mitigation market opportunities for the company. I have worked in the mitigation industry for the past 20 years in the Florida, North Carolina, New Jersey, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina markets. Within my time in the mitigation industry, I have represented over 38 mitigation banks that include stream, wetland, buffer, nutrient, and habitat ecological offsets throughout the eastern portion of the United States, and one project in Texas.
My experience includes working with private, public, and non-governmental organizations.
After 10 years in the Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) industry helping distressed projects reposition themselves, and two years at a marketing firm, I was introduced to mitigation banking in Southwest Florida. That’s when my mitigation education started. In 2003, the industry was only eight years old. If there was a need, and sound science could be applied, everything was possible if you could see the potential. It’s a little more complicated and a lot more competitive now, but that is what makes it fun.
What continues to make this industry exciting to me is being able to apply my experience towards problem solving in an industry that has a purpose to preserve and restore important aquatic resources and endangered species habitat. Through my years of involvement with regulatory agencies, clients, and the mitigation banking industry, I have been involved with many projects that were the first of its kind, and now are the standard industry practice. I believe there is still so much more we can accomplish.
I received a Bachelor of Arts in Communications from the University of Louisville. My wife and I enjoy camping with our three Labrador Retrievers in the NC mountains and spending time with our three adult children. My sports passion is professional football (soccer).